There was another long pause. I could see she knew she ought to respond and desperately wanted to but she struggled to summon the words. ‘Alicia Ben...on’, she announced eventually and broke into a relieved smile that she had been able to articulate her name so successfully. ‘Well, Alicia, I think we should celebrate knowing each other’s names. I’ll buy you a coffee.’ We found a table in the coffee shop adjoining the station and I learnt for the first time of the agonies to which I had. Like the first time.”A replay of the previous thirteen years flashed through my mind. The dance. The pursuit. Making love with Bethany that first time. And then the second. Our Senior Prom. Sharing Bethany and Kathy. College. Sharing Bethany and Pam. Punching Gene. Trying to be a couple. The accident. Andrew. The break up. Our weekend in Kohler. Nick. The funeral. The sheer emotion of those memories caused my head to spin and my knees to grow week.“Steve? Steve?” I heard Bethany say through a. " Wow, I wish I could have seen that, I don't suppose you took a photo." No, sorry. But anyhow, when we got there everyone was hanging around in the bar and they gave us both a glass of champagne. I know we were both too young but they must have thought we looked 18! David pointed out a couple of girls and said the youngest one, Kate, was the girl who told him about the dance." The one he reckoned fancied him?" Yes, her. She looked about his age and pretty cute it's true. She was with an older. But, you showed no reaction as our fingers slowly parted. Instead, in that special moment, we looked into each other’s eyes, and encountered thoughts of each other. Over the next few weeks we hardly had the chance to talk. Our eyes would meet across the office every day and I would recall the moment we had shared. We shared an email, or several, mainly made up of random work requests, but, as the days passed, the emails became more personal. We even got a little raunchy, giving the IT.